SONNET (QUERY, BY MILTON) ON THE LIBRARY AT CAMBRIDGE.
In a Collection of Recente and Witty Pieces by several eminente hands, London, printed by W.S. for Simon Waterfou, 1628, p. 109., is the following sonnet, far the best thing in the book:—
"ON THE LIBRARIE AT CAMBRIDGE.
"In that great maze of books I sighed and said,—
It is a grave-yard, and each tome a tombe;
Shrouded in hempen rags, behold the dead,
Coffined and ranged in crypts of dismal gloom,
Food for the worm and redolent of mold,
Traced with brief epitaph in tarnished gold—
Ah, golden lettered hope!—ah, dolorous doom!
Yet mid the common death, where all is cold,
And mildewed pride in desolation dwells,
A few great immortalities of old
Stand brightly forth—not tombes but living shrines,
Where from high sainte or martyr virtue wells,
Which on the living yet work miracles,
Spreading a relic wealth richer than golden mines.
"J.M. 1627."
Attached to it, it will be seen, are the initials J.M. and the date 1627. Is it possible that this may be an early and neglected sonnet of Milton? and yet, could Milton have seriously perpetrated the pun in the second line?
C. HOWARD KENYON.